Twisted Metal is a vehicular combat game in which the player takes control of one of twelve unique vehicles.

The difficulty level the game is set on determines how much of the vehicle's health is replenished and how fast the stations recharge once the player has used them.

[10] Once a year the legendary Calypso, a man who dwells beneath the streets of Los Angeles, holds the "Twisted Metal" competition.

[12] Given one final chance, Jaffe joined fellow designer Mike Giam and their boss, Sony Santa Monica's Alan Becker, for a meeting with the Evans & Sutherland company in Salt Lake City.

Evans & Sutherland, a commercial and military computer simulation firm, had been contracted by Sony to create a 3D game for the new system.

[13][14][15] Initially, the development team members had difficulty coming up with ideas to fully implement the Evans & Sutherland technology.

[16] Upon returning from the meeting, the brainstorming lead designers were inspired while being stuck in a traffic jam on Interstate 405, when they jokingly fantasized about using guns and missiles on the other cars.

[14] SingleTrac began simultaneously developing the two projects, codenamed "Red Mercury" (Warhawk) and "Firestorm" (Twisted Metal).

[22] During the testing phase, the player would be able to fly the Warhawk ship around the first arena of Twisted Metal and fire weapons at the cars below.

[23] Before finalizing the game's title, the developer considered various monikers including "Urban Assault", "Cars and Rockets", and "High Octane".

[24] SingleTrac also filmed live action footage for each character's ending, but it was not featured in the game's final release because some members of the development team found it too offensive.

[27] The two games were among the first PlayStation titles available outside Japan and were part of a large, multimedia advertising campaign by Sony for the console's western debut.

[28] Despite some criticism from members of Sony Computer Entertainment's Japanese division and focus test groups just prior to its marketing phase,[12] Twisted Metal went gold and was completed on a budget of $850,000.

[44] The Black Widow of GamePro criticized the graphics for their static arena crowd, difficult-to-read radar, and heavy break-up, and described the music as "weak overall".

[42] A reviewer for Next Generation called it "another showcase title for the PlayStation", and said that while the texture maps are simple, this allows the action to play out fast enough that players will rarely notice the lack of detail.

He agreed with Maximum that the game is too short, contending that even players with nominal skill will reach the final stage in about two hours, but felt that the enduring fun of the two-player mode "nearly" makes up for this.